A song of ascents. A sickly infant is born in Vienna’s Rothschild Hospital on the seventh day of the month of Cheshvan in the year 5646. The date recorded on his birth certificate is 16 October, 1885. His parents, Jews of Byelorusian extraction, made their way to Austria after the pogroms of four years prior. They are now secular, having abandoned the religion of their forebears out of fear as they left the burning remains of the village from which they came. A hospital rabbi offers to pray for the prematurely withered child during the reading of the week’s Torah portion. The parents politely refuse, but the mother asks what the portion is. The rabbi tells them it’s Lech Lecha. Without speaking, the parents both remember the words with which it begins: Vayomer Adonai el Avram lech lecha m’artzcha umimoladtecha umibeyt avicha el ha’aretz asher arecha. Without speaking, they both know they will name the boy Avram. Without speaking, they both know he will not die in the place of his birth.